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Frontier Episode 24: Alone But Never Alone

In this episode, JP has to confront
doubts about having friends. Once the enemy poses, amplifies and
exaggerates such doubts to an unrecognizable proportion, that is.

Yay! It's the Sakkakumon arc! It's time
for the kids to run around the Sephirot for five episodes, and thus
making me brush up on both my Kabbalah and my big book of Final
Fantasy VII jokes. While it ultimately amounts to little more than
random character development, it's a very clever and creepy stage to
hold the proceedings and tee up the big Duskmon storyline. Plus
anything in a kid's show that's making me research Kabbalah can't
possibly be a bad thing, right?

Everybody's going to get a turn on this
ride, and it starts with JP because why the hell not? The group is in
high spirits following their victory over Mercurymon and Ranamon. In
fact, considering it involved three of them being tied to a rack and
tortured while another went through a time warp in search of himself
and a fifth survived only due to a random twinge of angst, their
spirits might be a little too high. Still, it's a fun moment as JP
pretends to lead the team down a linear path to the Rose Morning Star
as the others plan out a timeshare for the captaincy and mock JP's
leadership abilities. While it's probably meant to underline a lack
of respect the others have for JP, it does more to illustrate how
close they've all gotten, how they can throw harmless barbs at each
other, and how Takuya is comfortable letting someone else pretend
that they know what they're doing.

It doesn't matter who's leading the way
as the road opens up in front of them and everyone save Bokomon and
Neemon are sucked into the beast. Mercurymon has a solid plan here:
the interior of Sakkakumon is freaky enough without the giant
eyeballs and frisky slime hands. Add those in to separate the group
and it's even more promising. The goal is to draw kids into separate
elemental zones, each with its own traps and monsters. It's a
sensible enough plan, but with one major flaw: on top of the trippy
atmosphere, Mercurymon tries to engage in direct psychological
warfare rather than just overpower them physically. That never works.

Mercurymon isn't the first enemy to
prey on insecurities in the hopes of the good guys beating up
themselves. Such efforts inevitably fail when the hero realizes that
he's good enough, he's strong enough and doggone it, people like him.
What makes his efforts to undermine JP especially pitiful is all the
work that needs to go into it. First he needs to trap JP in the Earth
Area and have Volcamon tell him someone pushed him in and that he
doesn't have any friends after all. Once Beetlemon takes care of him,
a shadow version tries to reinforce the message by throwing in a few
flashbacks and some illusions of the other four taunting him. While
Shadow Beetlemon proves formidable, he never quite convinces JP that
everybody's against him, because JP's just not that gullible.

The thing to understand about JP is
that while he's kind of an asshole a lot of the time, he's not a
moron. It's not that Volcamon or Shadow Beetlemon are lying about JP
not having friends, it's more that JP is already aware of his
problems socializing. He knows that he tries too hard to impress or
bribe his way into gaining admirers, failing to dedicate himself to
the foundation that makes a true friend. JP may hate to confront it,
but this isn't new information for him, so it doesn't have the impact
that it should.

Meanwhile, since this “true friends”
thing is new to him, he can feel the difference in his relationship
with the rest of the group. That's why he just can't get his head
around the idea that the other four don't value his contributions to
the team or consider him a friend. The enemy here is trying to force
JP to have an epiphany over information he's already sorted out in
his head. While it's a nice way to have a character overcome such
tactics, it's embarrassing that Mercurymon would try them in the
first place.

My Grade: B-

Loose Data:

Better Know A Sephirah! Sakkakumon
takes the form of the Sephirot, an ancient diagram of emanations that
acts as sort of a flow chart to explain the relationship between the
divine and the mortal. The Earth Area JP finds himself in is called
Yesod, meaning “foundation.” Basically, it does the dirty work of
collecting the energies from other spheres and making something
tangible out of them. Considering how some of these areas get so
little action, it's possible there isn't any logic behind certain
things happening in certain areas. But if there is, JP having to
balance himself and his shadow in order to discern reality would be
the symbolism here, as does making earth the dominant element.

The whole group is getting sucked into
a mysterious void and totally freaking out, and Zoe's worrying about
her skirt.

Frisky slime hands flying all over the
place and Zoe clobbers Takuya because she thought he suddenly decided
to play grabass. Once again, Zoe violently reacting when she
mistakenly thinks she's being sexually harassed and letting it slide
when she actually is being sexually harassed.

Takuya actually sexually harassing Zoe
was cut from the dub when he comments about her being heavy after she
crashes into him. That's why she checks her waistband. She should
have clobbered him.

I think they just dropped the ball with the Beast Spirits and reduced the concept to "anything so long as it's not human". They don't even get that right, as Calmaramon still has the top half of a human, Zephyrmon is still obviously humanoid, and Gigasmon is basically a troll with a big nose.

I don't mind so much, since I think they serve just as well as the Frontier equivalent of Ultimates, but it is jarring when you think about it.

I am a huge fan of the Sephirot due to 666 Satan being one of my favorite mangas ever! Somehow I didn't think the spheres of Sakkakumon would actually correspond to Sephorot. I felt like they just picked random spheres, I should have thought it out better.